Under Two Flags by Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

Its easy to link to paragraphs in the Full Text ArchiveIf this page contains some material that you want to link to but you don't want your visitors to have to scroll down the whole page just hover your mouse over the relevent paragraph and click the bookmark icon that appears to the left of it. The address of that paragraph will appear in the address bar of your browser. For further details about how you can link to the Full Text Archive please refer to our linking page.

It seemed well to him. Dead, his secret would lie in the grave withhim, and the long martyrdom of his life be ended.

In the brightness of the noon Cigarette leaned out of her little ovalcasement that framed her head like an old black oak carving--a headwith the mellow bloom on its cheeks, and the flash of scarlet aboveits dark curls, and the robin-like grace of poise and balance as ithung out there in the sun.

Cigarette had been there a whole hour in thought; she who never hadwasted a moment in meditation or reverie, and who found the longAfrican day all too short for her busy, abundant, joyous life, thatwas always full of haste and work, just as a bird's will seem so,though the bird have no more to do than to fly at its will throughsummer air, and feed at its will from brook and from berry, from aripe ear of the corn or from a deep cup of the lily. For the firsttime she was letting time drift away in the fruitless labor of vain,purposeless thought, because, for the first time also, happiness wasnot with her.

They were gone forever--all the elastic joyance, all the free, fairhours, all the dauntless gayety of childhood, all the sweet,harmonious laughter of a heart without a care. They were gone forever;for the touch of love and of pain had been laid on her; and neveragain would her radiant eyes smile cloudlessly, like the youngeagle's, at a sun that rose but to be greeted as only youth can greatanother dawn of life that is without a shadow.

And she leaned wearily there, with her cheek lying on the cold, grayMoorish stone; the color and the brightness were in the rays of thelight, in the rich hues of her hair and her mouth, in the scarlet glowof her dress; there was no brightness in her face. The eyes werevacant as they watched the green lizard glide over the wall beyond,and the lips were parted with a look of unspeakable fatigue; the tire,not of the limbs, but of the heart. She had come thither, hoping toleave behind her on the desert wind that alien care, that new, strangepassion, which sapped her strength, and stung her pride, and made herevil with such murderous lust of vengeance; and they were with herstill. Only something of the deadly, biting ferocity of jealousy hadchanged into a passionate longing to be as that woman was who had hislove; into a certain hopeless, sickening sense of having forever lostthat which alone could have given her such beauty and such honor inthe sight of men as those this woman had.

To her it seemed impossible that this patrician who had his passionshould not return it. To the child of the camp, though she oftenmocked at caste, all the inexorable rules, all the reticent instinctsof caste, were things unknown. She would have failed to comprehend allthe thousand reasons which would have forbidden any bond between thegreat aristocrat and a man of low grade and of dubious name. She onlythought of love as she had always seen it, quickly born, hotlycherished, wildly indulged, and without tie or restraint.

"And I came without my vengeance!" she mused. To the nature that feltthe ferocity of the vendetta a right and a due, there was woundinghumiliation in her knowledge that she had left her rival unharmed, andhad come hither, out from his sight and his presence, lest he shouldsee in her one glimpse of that folly which she would have killedherself under her own steel rather than have been betrayed, either forhis contempt or his compassion.

"And I came without my vengeance!" she mused, in that oppressive noon,in that gray and lonely place, in that lofty tower-solitude, wherethere was nothing between her and the hot, hard, cruel blue of theheavens, vengeance looked the only thing that was left her; the onlymeans whereby that void in her heart could be filled, that shame inher life be washed out. To love! and to love a man who had no love forher, whose eyes only beheld another's face, whose ears only thirstedfor another's voice! Its degradation stamped her a traitress in herown sight--traitress to her code, to her pride, to her country, to herflag!

And yet, at the core of her heart so tired a pang was aching! She whohad gloried in being the child of the whole people, the daughter ofthe whole army, felt lonely and abandoned, as though she were somebird which an hour ago had been flying in all its joy among itsbrethren and now, maimed with one shot, had fallen, with broken pinionand torn plumage, to lie alone upon the sand and die.

The touch of a bird's wing brushing her hair brought the dreamycomparison to her wandering thoughts. She started and lifted her head;it was a blue carrier-pigeon, one of the many she fed at thatcasement, and the swiftest and surest of several she sent withmessages for the soldiers between the various stations and corps. Shehad forgotten she had left the bird at the encampment.

She caressed it absently, while the tired creature sank down on herbosom; then only she saw that there was a letter beneath one wing. Sheunloosed it, and looked at it without being able to tell its meaning;she could not read a word, printed or written. Military habits weretoo strong with her for the arrival not to change her reverie intoaction; whoever it was for, it must be seen. She gave the pigeon waterand grain, then wound her way down the dark, narrow stairs, throughthe height of the tower, out into the passage below.

She found an old French cobbler sitting at a stall in a casement,stitching leather; he was her customary reader and scribe in thisquarter. She touched him with the paper. "Bon Mathieu! Wilt thou readthis to me?"

"It is for thee, Little One, and signed 'Petit Pot-de-terre.' "

Cigarette nodded listlessly.

" 'Tis a good lad, and a scholar," she answered absently. "Read on!"

And he read aloud:

" 'There is ill news. I send the bird on a chance to find thee. Bel-a-faire-peau struck the Black Hawk--a slight blow, but with threat to kill following it. He has been tried, and is to be shot. There is no appeal. The case is clear; the Colonel could have cut him down, were that all. I thought you should know. We are all sorry. It was done on the night of the great fete. I am thy humble lover and slave.' "

So the boy-Zouave's scrawl, crushed, and blotted, and written withgreat difficulty, ran in its brief phrases that the slow muttering ofthe old shoemaker drew out in tedious length.

Cigarette heard; she never made a movement or gave a sound, but allthe blood fled out of her brilliant face, leaving it horribly blanchedbeneath its brown sun-scorch; and her eyes--distended, senseless,sightless--were fastened on the old man's slowly moving mouth.

"Read it again!" she said simply, when all was ended. He started andlooked up at her face; the voice had not one accent of its own toneleft.

He obeyed, and read it once more to the end. Then a loud, shudderingsigh escaped her, like the breath of one stifling under flames.

"Shot!" she said vacantly. "Shot!"

Her vengeance had come without her once lifting her hand to summon it.

The old man rose hurriedly.

"Child! Art thou ill?"

"The blow was struck for her!" she muttered. "It was that night, youhear--that night!"

"Love? Love? I hated him, look you! So I said. And I longed for myvengeance. It is come!"

She was still a moment; her white, parched mouth quivering as thoughshe were under physical torture, her strained eyes fastened on theempty air, the veins in her throat swelling and throbbing till theyglowed to purple. Then she crushed the letter in one hand, and flew,fleet as any antelope through the streets of the Moorish quarter, andacross the city to the quay.

The people ever gave way before her; but now they scattered likefrightened sheep from her path. There was something that terrifiedthem in that bloodless horror set upon her face, and in that fury ofresistless speed with which she rushed upon her way.

Once only in her headlong career through the throngs she paused; itwas as one face, on which the strong light of the noontide poured,came before her. The senseless look changed in her eyes; she wheeledout of her route, and stopped before the man who had thus arrestedher. He was leaning idly over the stall of a Turkish bazaar, and herhand grasped his arm before he saw her.

"You have his face!" she muttered. "What are you to him?"

He made no answer; he was too amazed.

"You are of his race," she persisted. "You are brethren by your look.What are you to him?"

"To whom?"

"To the man who calls himself Louis Victor! A Chasseur of my army!"

Her eyes were fastened entirely on him; keen, ruthless, fierce, inthis moment as a hawk's. He grew pale and murmured an incoherentdenial. He sought to shake her off, first gently, then more rudely; hecalled her mad, and tried to fling her from him; but the lithe fingersonly wound themselves closer on his arm.

"Be still--fool!" she muttered; and there was that in the accent thatlent a strange force and dignity in that moment to the careless andmischievous plaything of the soldiery--force that overcame him,dignity that overawed him. "You are of his people; you have his eyes,and his look, and his features. He disowns you, or you him. No matterwhich. He is of your blood; and he lies under sentence of death. Doyou know that?"

With a stifled cry, the other recoiled from her; he never doubted thatshe spoke the truth; nor could any who had looked upon her face.

"Do not lie to me," she said curtly. "It avails you nothing. Readthat."

She thrust before him the paper the pigeon had brought; his handtrembled sorely as he held it; he believed in that moment that thisstrange creature--half soldier, half woman, half brigand, half child--knew all his story and all his shame from his brother.

"Shot!" he echoed hoarsely, as she had done, when he had read on tothe end. "Shot! Oh, my God! and I----"

She drew him out of the thoroughfare into a dark recess within thebazaar, he submitting unresistingly. He was filled with the horror,the remorse, the overwhelming shock of his brother's doom.

"He will be shot," she said with a strange calmness. "We shoot downmany men in our army. I knew him well. He was justified in his act, Ido not doubt; but discipline will not stay for that--"

"Silence, for mercy's sake! Is there no hope--no possibility?"

Her lips were parched like the desert sand as her dry, hard words camethrough them. "None. His chief could have cut him down in the instant.It took place in camp. You feel this thing; you are of his race,then?"

"I am his brother!"

She was silent; looking at him fixedly, it did not seem to her strangethat she should thus have met one of his blood in the crowds ofAlgiers. She was absorbed in the one catastrophe whose hideousnessseemed to eat her very life away, even while her nerve, and her brain,and her courage remained at their keenest and strongest.

"You are his brother," she said slowly, so much as an affirmation thathis belief was confirmed that she had learned both their relationshipand their history from Cecil. "You must go to him, then."

He shook from head to foot.

"Yes, yes! But it will be too late!"

She did not know that the words were cried out in all the contritionof an unavailing remorse; she gave them only their literalsignificance, and shuddered as she answered him.

"That you must risk. You must go to him. But, first, I must know more.Tell me his name, his rank."

He was silent; coward and egotist though he was, both cowardice andegotism were killed in him under the overwhelming horror with which hefelt himself as truly by moral guilt a fratricide as though he hadstabbed his elder through the heart.

"Speak!" hissed Cigarette through her clenched teeth. "If you have anykindness, any pity, any love for the man of your blood, who will beshot there like a dog, do not waste a second--answer me, tell me all."

He turned his wild, terrified glance upon her; he had in that momentno sense but to seize some means of reparation, to declare hisbrother's rights, to cry out to the very stones of the streets his ownwrong and his victim's sacrifice.

"He is the head of my house!" he answered her, scarce knowing what heanswered. "He should bear the title that I bear now. He is here, inthis misery, because he is the most merciful, the most generous, themost long-suffering of living souls! If he dies, it is not they whohave killed him; it is I!"

She listened, with her face set in that stern, fixed, resolute commandwhich never varied; she neglected all that wonder, or curiosity, orinterest would have made her as at any other time, she only heeded thefew great facts that bore upon the fate of the condemned.

"Settle with yourself for that sin," she said bitterly. "Your remorsewill not save him. But do the thing that I bid you, if that remorse besincere. Write me out here that title you say he should bear, and yourstatement that he is your brother, and should be the chief of yourhouse; then sign it, and give it to me."

He seized her hands, and gazed with imploring eyes into her face.

"Who are you? What are you? If you have the power to do it, for thelove of God rescue him! It is I who have murdered him--I--who have lethim live on in this hell for my sake!"

"For your sake!"

She flung his hands off her and looked him full in the face; thatglance of the speechless scorn, the unutterable rebuke of the woman-child who would herself have died a thousand deaths rather than havepurchased a whole existence by a single falsehood or a singlecowardice, smote him like a blow, and avenged his sin more absolutelythan any public chastisement. The courage and the truth of a girlscorned his timorous fear and his living lie. His head sank, he seemedto shrink under her gaze; his act had never looked so vile to him asit looked now.

She gazed a moment longer at him with her mute and wondering disdainthat there should be on earth a male life capable of such fear and ofsuch ignominy as this. Then the strong and rapid power in her took itsinstant ascendancy over the weaker nature.

"Monsieur, I do not know your story, I do not want. I am not used tomen who let others suffer for them. What I want is your writtenstatement of your brother's name and station; give it me."

He made a gesture of consent; he would have signed away his soul, ifhe could, in the stupor of remorse which had seized him. She broughthim pens and paper from the Turk's store, and dictated what he wrote:

"I hereby affirm that the person serving in the Chasseurs d'Afrique under the name of Louis Victor is my older brother, Bertie Cecil, lawfully, by inheritance, the Viscount Royallieu, Peer of England. I hereby also acknowledge that I have succeeded to and borne the title illegally, under the supposition of his death.

(Signed)

"BERKELEY CECIL."

He wrote it mechanically; the force of her will and the torture of hisown conscience driving him, on an impulse, to undo in an instant thewhole web of falsehood that he had let circumstance weave on and on toshelter him through twelve long years. He let her draw the paper fromhim and fold it away in her belt. He watched her with a curious,dreamy sense of his own impotence against the fierce and fiery torrentof her bidding.

"What is it you will do?" he asked her.

"The best that shall lie in my power. Do you the same."

"Can his life yet be saved?"

"His honor may--his honor shall."

Her face had an exceeding beauty as she spoke though it was stern andrigid still, a look that was sublime gleamed over it. She, the waifand stray of a dissolute camp, knew better than the scion of his ownrace how the doomed man would choose the vindication of his honorbefore the rescue of his life. He laid his hand on her as she moved.

"Stay!--stay! One word----"

She flung him off her again.

"This is no time for words. Go to him--coward!--and let the balls thatkill him reach you too, if you have one trait of manhood left in you!"

Then, swiftly as a swallow darts, she quitted him and flew on herheadlong way, down through the pressure of the people, and the throngsof the marts, and the noise, and the color, and the movement of thestreets.

The sun was scarce declined from its noon before she rode out of thecity, on a half-bred horse of the Spahis, swift as the antelope and aswild, with her only equipment some pistols in her holsters, and a bagof rice and a skin of water slung at her saddle-bow.

They asked her where she went; she never answered. The hoofs strucksharp echoes out of the rugged stones, and the people were scatteredlike chaff as she went at full gallop down through Algiers. Hercomrades, used to see her ever with some song in the air and somelaugh on the lips as she went, looked after her with wonder as shepassed them, silent, and with her face white and stern as though thebright, brown loveliness of it had been changed to alabaster.

"What is it with the Cigarette?" they asked each other. None couldtell; the desert horse and his rider flew by them as a swallow flies.The gleam of her Cross and the colorless calm of the childlike facethat wore the resolve of a Napoleon's on it were the last they eversaw of Cigarette.

All her fluent, untiring speech was gone--gone with the rose hue fromher cheek, with the laugh from her mouth, with the child's joyancefrom her heart; but the brave, stanch, dauntless spirit lived with asoldier's courage, with a martyr's patience.

And she rode straight through the scorch of the midday sun, along thesea-coast westward. The dizzy swiftness would have blinded most whoshould have been carried through the dry air and under the burningskies at that breathless and pauseless speed; but she had ridden half-maddened colts with the skill of Arabs themselves; she had been tossedon a holster from her earliest years, and had clung with an infant'shands in fearless glee to the mane of roughriders' chargers. She neverswerved, she never sickened; she was borne on and on against the hard,hot currents of the cleft air with only one sense--that she went soslowly, so slowly, when with every beat of the ringing hoofs one ofthe few moments of a charmed life fled away!

She had a long route before her; she had many leagues to travel, andthere were but four-and-twenty hours, she knew well, left to the manwho was condemned to death. Four-and-twenty hours left open for appeal--no more--betwixt the delivery and execution of the sentence. Thatdelay was always interpreted by the French Code as a delay extendingfrom the evening of the day to the dawn of the second day following;and some slight interval might then ensue, according as the general incommand ordained. But the twenty-four hours was all of which she couldbe certain; and even of them some must have flown by since thecarrier-pigeon had been loosed to her. She could not tell how long hehad to live.

There were fifty miles between her and her goal; Abd-el-Kader's horsehad once covered that space in three hours, so men of the Army ofD'Aumale had told her; she knew what they had done she could do. Onceonly she paused, to let her horse lie a brief while, and cool hisfoam-flecked sides, and crop some short, sweet grass that grew where acleft of water ran and made the bare earth green. She sat quitemotionless while he rested; she was keenly alive to all that couldbest save his strength and further her travel; but she watched himduring those few minutes of rest and inaction with a fearful look ofhunger in her eyes--the worst hunger--that which craves Time andcannot seize it fast enough. Then she mounted again, and again wenton, on her flight.

She swept by cantonments, villages, soldiers on the march, douairs ofpeaceful Arabs, strings of mules and camels, caravans of merchandise;nothing arrested her; she saw nothing that she passed, as she rodeover the hard, dust-covered, shadowless roads; over the weary, sun-scorched, monotonous country; over the land without verdure andwithout foliage, the land that yet has so weird a beauty, soirresistible a fascination; the land to which men, knowing that deathwaits for them in it, yet return with as mad an infatuation as herlovers went back across the waters to Circe.

The horse was reeking with smoke and foam, and the blood was coursingfrom his flanks, as she reached her destination at last, and threwherself off his saddle as he sank, faint and quivering, to the ground.Whither she had come was to a fortress where the Marshal of France,who was the Viceroy of Africa, had arrived that day in his progress ofinspection throughout the provinces. Soldiers clustered round hereagerly beneath the gates and over the fallen beast; a thousandquestions pouring from their curious tongues. She pointed to theanimal with one hand, to the gaunt pile of stone that bristled withcannon with the other.

"Have a care of him; and lead me to the chief."

She spoke quietly; but a certain sensation of awe and fear moved thosewho heard. She was not the Child of the Army whom they knew so well.She was a creature, desperate, hard-pressed, mute as death, strong assteel; above all, hunted by despair.

They hesitated to take her message, to do her bidding. The one whomshe sought was great and supreme here as a king; they dreaded toapproach his staff, to ask his audience.

Cigarette looked at them a moment, then loosened her Cross and held itout to an adjutant standing beneath the gates.

"Take that to the man who gave it me. Tell him Cigarette waits; andwith each moment that she waits a soldier's life is lost. Go!"

The adjutant took it, and went. Over and over again she had broughtintelligence of an Arab movement, news of a contemplated razzia,warning of an internal revolt, or tidings of an encounter on theplains, that had been of priceless value to the army which she served.It was not lightly that Cigarette's words were ever received when shespoke as she spoke now; nor was it impossible that she now brought tothem that which would brook neither delay nor trifling.

She waited patiently; all the iron discipline of military life hadnever bound her gay and lawless spirit down; but now she wassingularly still and mute. Only there gleamed thirstily in her eyesthat fearful avarice which begrudges every moment in its flight asnever the miser grudged his hoarded gold into the robber's grasp.

A few minutes and the decoration was brought back to her, and herdemand granted. She was summoned to the Marshal's presence. It was theordnance room, a long, vast, silent chamber filled with stands ofarms, with all the arts and appliances of war brought to theiruttermost perfection, and massed in all the resource of a great empireagainst the sons of the desert, who had nothing to oppose to them savethe despair of a perishing nationality and a stifled freedom.

The Marshal, leaning against a brass field-piece, turned to her with asmile in his keen, stern eyes.

"You, my young one! What brings you here?"

She came up to him with her rapid leopard-like grace, and he startedas he saw the change upon her features. She was covered with sand anddust, and with the animal's blood-flecked foam. The beating of herheart from the fury of the gallop had drained every hue from her face;her voice was scarcely articulate in its breathless haste as shesaluted him.

"Monsieur, I have come from Algiers since noon--"

"From Algiers!" He and his officers echoed the name of the city inincredulous amaze; they knew how far from them down along the sea-linethe white town lay.

"Since noon, to rescue a life--the life of a great soldier, of aguiltless man. He who saved the honor of France at Zaraila is to diethe death of a mutineer at dawn!"

"What!--your Chasseur!"

A dusky, scarlet fire burned through the pallor of her face; but hereyes never quailed, and the torrent of her eloquence returned underthe pangs of shame that were beaten back under the noble instincts ofher love.

"Mine!--since he is a soldier of France; yours, too, by that title. Iam come here, from Algiers, to speak the truth in his name, and tosave him for his own honor and the honor of my Empire. See here! Atnoon, I have this paper, sent by a swift pigeon. Read it! You see howhe is to die, and why. Well, by my Cross, by my Flag, by my France, Iswear that not a hair of his head shall be touched, and not a drop ofblood in his veins shall be shed!"

He looked at her, astonished at the grandeur and the courage whichcould come on this child of razzias and revelries, and give to her allthe splendor of a fearless command of some young empress. But his facedarkened and set sternly as he read the paper; it was the greatestcrime in the sight of a proud soldier, this crime against discipline,of the man for whom she pleaded.

"You speak madly," he said, with cold brevity. "The offense merits thechastisement. I shall not attempt to interfere."

"Wait! You will hear, at least, Monsieur?"

"I will hear you--yes, but I tell you, once for all, I never changesentences that are pronounced by councils of war; and this crime isthe last for which you should attempt to plead for mercy with me."

"Hear me, at least!" she cried, with passionate ferocity--the ferocityof a dumb animal wounded by a shot. "You do not know what this man is--how he has had to endure; I do. I have watched him; I have seen thebrutal tyranny of his chief, who hated him because the soldiers lovedhim. I have seen his patience, his obedience, his long-sufferingbeneath insults that would have driven any other to revolt and murder.I have seen him--I have told you how--at Zaraila, thinking never ofdeath or life, only of our Flag, that he has made his own, and underwhich he has been forced to lead the life of a galley slave--"

"The finer soldier he be, the less pardonable his offense."

"That I deny! If he were a dolt, a brute, a thing of wood as many are,he would have no right to vengeance; as it is, he is a gentleman, ahero, a martyr; may he not forget for one hour that he is a slave?Look you! I have seen him so tried that I told him--I, who love myarmy better than any living thing under the sun--that I would forgivehim if he forgot duty and dealt with his tyrant as man to man. And healways held his soul in patience. Why? Not because he feared death--hedesired it; but because he loved his comrades, and suffered in peaceand in silence lest, through him, they should be led into evil----"

His eyes softened as he heard her; but the inflexibility of his voicenever altered.

"It is useless to argue with me," he said briefly; "I never change asentence."

"But I say that you shall!" As the audacious words were flung forth,she looked him full in the eyes, while her voice rang with its oldimperious oratory. "You are a great chief; you are as a monarch here;you hold the gifts and the grandeur of the Empire; but, because ofthat--because you are as France in my eyes--I swear, by the name ofFrance, that you shall see justice done to him; after death, if youcannot in life. Do you know who he is--this man whom his comrades willshoot down at sunrise as they shoot down the murderer and the ravisherin their crimes?"

"He is a rebellious soldier; it is sufficient."

"He is not! He is a man who vindicated a woman's honor; he is a manwho suffers in a brother's place; he is an aristocrat exiled to amartyrdom; he is a hero who has never been greater than he will begreat in his last hour. Read that! What you refuse to justice, andmercy, and courage, and guiltlessness, you will grant, maybe, to yourOrder."

She forced into his hand the written statement of Cecil's name andstation. All the hot blood was back in her cheek, all the fierypassion back in her eyes. She lashed this potent ruler with thescourge of her scorn as she had lashed a drunken horde of plundererswith her whip. She was reckless of what she said; she was consciousonly of one thing--the despair that consumed her.

The French Marshal glanced his eye on the fragment, carelessly andcoldly. As he saw the words, he started, and read on with wonderingeagerness.

"Royallieu!" he muttered--"Royallieu!"

The name was familiar to him; he it was who, when he had murmured,"That man has the seat of the English Guards," as a Chasseur d'Afriquehad passed him, had been ignorant that in that Chasseur he saw onewhom he had known in many a scene of court splendor and Parisianpleasure. The years had been many since Cecil and he had met, but notso many but that the name brought memories of friendship with it, andmoved him with a strange emotion.

He turned with grave anxiety to Cigarette.

"You speak strangely. How came this in your hands?"

"Thus: the day that you gave me the Cross, I saw Mme. la PrincesseCorona. I hated her, and I went--no matter! From her I learned that hewhom we call Louis Victor was of her rank, was of old friendship withher house, was exiled and nameless, but for some reason unknown toher. She needed to see him; to bid him farewell, so she said. I tookthe message for her; I sent him to her." Her voice grew husky andsavage, but she forced her words on with the reckless sacrifice ofself that moved her. "He went to her tent, alone, at night; that was,of course, whence he came when Chateauroy met him. I doubt not theBlack Hawk had some foul thing to hint of his visit, and that blow wasstruck for her--for her! Well; in the streets of Algiers I saw a manwith a face like his own, different, but the same race, look you. Ispoke to him; I taxed him. When he found that the one whom I spoke ofwas under sentence of death, he grew mad; he cried out that he was hisbrother and had murdered him--that it was for his sake that thecruelty of this exile had been borne--that, if his brother perished,he would be his destroyer. Then I bade him write down that paper,since these English names were unknown to me, and I brought it hitherto you that you might see, under his hand and with your own eyes, thatI have uttered the truth. And now, is that man to be killed like a madbeast whom you fear? Is that death the reward France will give forZaraila?"

Her eyes were fixed with a fearful intensity of appeal upon the sternface bent over her; her last arrow was sped; if this failed, all wasover. As he heard, he was visibly moved; he remembered the felon'sshame that in years gone by had fallen across the banished name ofBertie Cecil; the history seemed clear as crystal to him, seen beneaththe light shed on it from other days.

His hand fell heavily on the gun-carriage.

"Mort de Dieu! it was his brother's sin, not his!"

There was a long silence; those present, who knew nothing of all thatwas in his memory, felt instinctively that some dead weight of alienguilt was lifted off a blameless life forever.

She drew a deep, long, sighing breath; she knew that he was safe. Herhands unconsciously locked on the great chief's arms; her eyes lookedup, senselessly in their rapture and their dread, to his.

"Quick, quick!" she gasped. "The hours go so fast; while we speak herehe----"

The words died in her throat. The Marshal swung around with a rapidsign to a staff officer.

"Pens and ink! Instantly! My brave child, what can we say to you? Iwill send an aid to arrest the execution of the sentence. It must bedeferred till we know the whole truth of this. If it be as it looksnow, he shall be saved if the Empire can save him!"

She looked up in his eyes with a look that froze his very heart.

"His honor!" she muttered; "his honor--if not his life!"

He understood her; he bowed his haughty head low down to hers.

"True. We will cleanse that, if all other justice be too late."

The answer was infinitely gentle, infinitely solemn. Then he turnedand wrote his hurried order, and bade his aid go with it without asecond's loss. But Cigarette caught it from his hand.

"To me! to me! No other will go so fast!"

"But, my child, you are worn out already."

She turned on him her beautiful, wild eyes, in which the blinding,passionate tears were floating.

"Do you think I would tarry for that? Ah! I wish that I had let themtell me of God, that I might ask Him now to bless you! Quick, quick!Lend me your swiftest horse! One that will not tire. And send a secondorder by your aid-de-camp; the Arabs may kill me as I go, and then,they will not know!"

"My child, Africa has shown me much heroism, but none like yours. Ifyou fall, he shall be safe, and France will know how to avenge itsdarling's loss."

She turned and gave him one look, infinitely sweet, infinitelyeloquent.

"Ah, France!" she said, so softly that the last word was but a sign ofunutterable tenderness. The old, imperishable early love was notdethroned; it was there, still before all else. France was withoutrival with her.

Then, without another second's pause, she flew from them, and vaultinginto the saddle of a young horse which stood without in the court-yard, rode once more, at full speed out into the pitiless blaze of thesun, out to the wasted desolation of the plains.

The order of release, indeed, was in her bosom; but the chances wereas a million to one that she would reach him with it in time, ere withthe rising of the sun his life would have set forever.

All the horror of remorse was on her; to her nature the bitterjealousy in which she had desired vengeance on him seemed to haverendered her a murderess. She loved him--loved him with an exceedingpassion; and only in this extremity, when it was confronted with theimminence of death, did the fullness and the greatness of that lovemake their way out of the petulant pride and the wounded vanity whichhad obscured them. She had been ere now a child and a hero; beneaththis blow which struck at him she changed--she became a woman and amartyr.

And she rode at full speed through the night, as she had done throughthe daylight, her eyes glancing all around in the keen instinct of atrooper, her hand always on the butt of her belt pistol. For she knewwell what the danger was of these lonely, unguarded, untraveledleagues that yawned in so vast a distance between her and her goal.The Arabs, beaten, but only rendered furious by defeat, swept down onto those plains with the old guerrilla skill, the old marvelousrapidity. She knew that with every second shot or steel might send herreeling from her saddle; that with every moment she might besurrounded by some desperate band who would spare neither her sex norher youth. But that intoxication of peril, the wine-draught she haddrunk from her infancy, was all which sustained her in that race withdeath. It filled her veins with their old heat, her heart with its olddaring, her nerves with their old matchless courage; but for it shewould have dropped, heart-sick with terror and despair, ere her errandcould be done; under it she had the coolness, the keenness, thesagacity, the sustained force, and the supernatural strength of someyoung hunted animal. They might slay her, so that she left perforceher mission unaccomplished; but no dread of such a fate had even aninstant's power to appall her or arrest her. While there should bebreath in her, she would go on to the end.

There were eight hours' hard riding before her, at the swiftest paceher horse could make; and she was already worn by the leagues alreadytraversed. Although this was nothing new that she did now, yet as timeflew on and she flew with it, ceaselessly, through the dim, solitary,barren moonlit land, her brain now and then grew giddy, her heart nowand then stood still with a sudden numbing faintness. She shook theweakness off her with the resolute scorn for it of her nature, andsucceeded in its banishment. They had put in her hand, as she hadpassed through the fortress gates, a lance with a lantern muffled inArab fashion, so that the light was unseen from before, while itstreamed over herself, to enable her to guide her way if the moonshould be veiled by clouds. With that single, starry gleam aslant on alevel with her eyes, she rode through the ghastly twilight of thehalf-lit plains; now flooded with luster as the moon emerged, nowengulfed in darkness as the stormy western winds drove the cirrhi overit. But neither darkness nor light differed to her; she noted neither;she was like one drunk with strong wine, and she had but one dread--that the power of her horse would give way under the unnatural strainmade on it, and that she would reach too late, when the life she wentto save would have fallen forever, silent unto death, as she had seenthe life of Marquise fall.

Hour on hour, league on league, passed away; she felt the animalquiver under the spur, and she heard the catch in his panting breathas he strained to give his fleetest and best, that told her how, erelong, the racing speed, the extended gallop at which she kept him,would tell, and beat him down, despite his desert strain. She had nopity; she would have killed twenty horses under her to reach her goal.She was giving her own life, she was willing to lose it, if by itsloss she did this thing, to save even the man condemned to die withthe rising of the sun. She did not spare herself; and she would havespared no living thing, to fulfill the mission that she undertook. Sheloved with the passionate blindness of her sex, with the absoluteabandonment of the southern blood. If to spare him she must havebidden thousands fall, she would have given the word for theirdestruction without a moment's pause.

Once, from some screen of gaunt and barren rock, a shot was fired ather, and flew within a hair's breadth of her brain; she never evenlooked around to see whence it had come; she knew it was from someArab prowler of the plains. Her single spark of light through thehalf-veiled lantern passed as swiftly as a shooting-star across theplateau. And as she felt the hours steal on--so fast, so hideouslyfast--with that horrible relentlessness which tarries for no despair,as it hastens for no desire, her lips grew dry as dust, her tongueclove to the roof of her mouth, the blood beat like a thousand hammerson her brain.

What she dreaded came.

Midway in her course, when, by the stars, she knew midnight waspassed, the animal strained with hard-drawn, panting gasps to answerthe demand made on him by the spur and by the lance-shaft with whichhe was goaded onward. In the lantern light she saw his head stretchedout in the racing agony, his distended eyeballs, his neck covered withfoam and blood, his heaving flanks that seemed bursting with everythrob that his heart gave; she knew that, half a league more forcedfrom him, he would drop like a dead thing never to rise again. She letthe bridle drop upon the poor beast's neck, and threw her arms aboveher head with a shrill, wailing cry, whose despair echoed over thenoiseless plains like the cry of a shot-stricken animal. She saw itall: the breaking of the rosy, golden day; the stillness of the hushedcamp; the tread of the few picked men; the open coffin by the opengrave; the leveled carbines gleaming in the first rays of the sun. . .She had seen it so many times--seen it to the awful end, when theliving man fell down in the morning light a shattered, senseless,soulless, crushed-out mass.

That single moment was all the soldier's nature in her gave to theabandonment of despair, to the paralysis that seized her. With thatone cry from the depths of her breaking heart, the weakness spentitself; she knew that action alone could aid him. She looked across,southward and northward, east and west, to see if there were aughtnear from which she could get aid. If there were none, the horse mustdrop down to die, and with his life the other life would perish assurely as the sun would rise.

Her gaze, straining through the darkness, broken here and there byfitful gleams of moonlight, caught sight in the distance of some yetdarker thing, moving rapidly--a large cloud skimming the earth. Shelet the horse, which had paused the instant the bridle had touched hisneck, stand still a while, and kept her eyes fixed on the advancingcloud till, with the marvelous surety of her desert-trained vision,she disentangled it from the floating mists and wavering shadows andrecognized it, as it was, a band of Arabs.

If she turned eastward out of her route, the failing strength of herhorse would be fully enough to take her into safety from theirpursuit, or even from their perception, for they were comingstraightly and swiftly across the plain. If she were seen by them, shewas certain of her fate; they could only be the desperate remnant ofthe decimated tribes, the foraging raiders of starving and desperatemen, hunted from refuge to refuge, and carrying fire and sword intheir vengeance wherever an unprotected caravan or a defenselesssettlement gave them the power of plunder and of slaughter, thatspared neither age nor sex. She was known throughout the length andthe breadth of the land to the Arabs; she was neither child nor womanto them; she was but the soldier who had brought up the French reserveat Zaraila; she was but the foe who had seen them defeated, and riddendown with her comrades in their pursuit in twice a score ofvanquished, bitter, intolerably shameful days. Some among them hadsworn by their God to put her to a fearful death if ever they made hercaptive, for they held her in superstitious awe, and thought the spellof the Frankish successes would be broken if she were slain. She knewthat; yet, knowing it, she looked at their advancing band one moment,then turned her horse's head and rode straight toward them.

"They will kill me, but that may save him," she thought. "Any otherway he is lost."

So she rode directly toward them; rode so that she crossed theirfront, and placed herself in their path, standing quite still, withthe cloth torn from the lantern, so that its light fell full abouther, as she held it above her head. In an instant they knew her. Theywere the remnant who had escaped from the carnage of Zaraila; theyknew her with all the rapid, unerring surety of hate. They gave theshrill, wild war-shout of their tribe, and the whole mass of gaunt,dark, mounted figures with their weapons whirling round their headsinclosed her; a cloud of kites settled down with their black wings andcruel beaks upon one young silvery-plumed falcon.

She sat unmoved, and looked up at the naked blades that flashed aboveher; there was no fear upon her face, only a calm, resolute, proudbeauty--very pale, very still in the light that gleamed on it from thelantern rays.

"I surrender," she said briefly; she had never thought to say thesewords of submission to her scorned foes; she would not have beenbrought to utter them to spare her own existence. Their answer was ayell of furious delight, and their bare blades smote each other with aclash of brutal joy. They had her, the Frankish child who had broughtshame and destruction on them at Zaraila, and they longed to drawtheir steel across the fair young throat, to plunge their lances intothe bright, bare bosom, to twine her hair round their spear handles,to rend her delicate limbs apart, as a tiger rends the antelope, totorture, to outrage, to wreak their vengeance on her. Their chief,only, motioned their violence back from her, and bade them leave heruntouched. At him she looked still with the same fixed, serene,scornful resolve; she had encountered these men so often in battle,she knew so well how rich a prize she was to him. But she had onethought alone with her; and for it she subdued contempt, and hate, andpride, and every passion in her.

"I surrender," she said, with the same tranquillity. "I have heardthat you have sworn by your God and your Prophet to tear me limb fromlimb because that I--a child, and a woman-child--brought you to shameand to grief on the day of Zaraila. Well, I am here; do it. You canslake your will on me. But that you are brave men, and that I haveever met you in fair fight, let me speak one word with you first."

Through the menaces and the rage around her, fierce as the yelling ofstarving wolves around a frozen corpse, her clear, brave tones reachedthe ear of the chief in the lingua sabir that she used. He was a youngman, and his ear was caught by that tuneful voice, his eyes by thatyouthful face. He signed upward the swords of his followers, andmotioned them back as their arms were stretched to seize her, andtheir shouts clamored for her slaughter.

"Speak on," he said briefly to her.

"You have sworn to take my body, sawn in two, to Ben-Ihreddin?" shepursued, naming the Arab leader whom her Spahis had driven off thefield of Zaraila. "Well, here it is; you can take it to him; and youwill receive the piasters, and the horses, and the arms that he haspromised to whoever shall slay me. I have surrendered; I am yours. Butyou are bold men, and the bold are never mean; therefore, I will askone thing of you. There is a man yonder, in my camp, condemned todeath with the dawn. He is innocent. I have ridden from Algiers to-daywith the order of his release. If it is not there by sunrise he willbe shot; and he is guiltless as a child unborn. My horse is worn out;he could not go another half league. I knew that, since he had failed,my comrade would perish, unless I found a fresh beast or a messengerto go in my stead. I saw your band come across the plain. I knew thatyou would kill me, because of your oath and of your Emir's bride; butI thought that you would have greatness enough in you to save this manwho is condemned, without crime, and who must perish unless you, hisfoes, have pity on him. Therefore I came. Take the paper that freeshim; send your fleetest and surest with it, under a flag of truce,into our camp by the dawn; let him tell them there that I, Cigarette,gave it him. He must say no word of what you have done to me, or hiswhite flag will not protect him from the vengeance of my army--andthen receive your reward from your chief, Ben-Ihreddin, when you laymy head down for his horse's hoofs to trample into the dust. Answer me--is the compact fair? Ride on with this paper northward, and thenkill me with what torments you choose."

She spoke with calm, unwavering resolve, meaning that which sheuttered to its very uttermost letter. She knew that these men hadthirsted for her blood; she offered it to be shed to gain for him thatmessenger on whose speed his life was hanging. She knew that a pricewas set upon her head; but she delivered herself over to the hands ofher enemies so that thereby she might purchase his redemption.

As they heard, silence fell upon the brutal, clamorous herd around--the silence of amaze and of respect. The young chief listened gravely;by the glistening of his keen, black eyes, he was surprised and moved,though, true to his teaching, he showed neither emotion as he answeredher.

"Who is this Frank for whom you do this thing?"

"He is the warrior to whom you offered life on the field of Zarailabecause his courage was as the courage of gods."

She knew the qualities of the desert character; knew how to appeal toits reverence and to its chivalry.

"And for what does he perish?" he asked.

"Because he forgot for once that he was a slave, and because he hasborne the burden of guilt that was not his own."

They were quite still now, closed around her; these ferociousplunderers, who had been thirsty a moment before to sheathe theirweapons in her body, were spellbound by the sympathy of courageoussouls, by some vague perception that there was a greatness in thislittle tigress of France, whom they had sworn to hunt down andslaughter, which surpassed all they had known or dreamed.

"And you have given yourself up to us that, by your death, you maypurchase a messenger from us for this errand?" pursued their leader.He had been reared as a boy in the high tenets and the pure chivalriesof the school of Abd-el-Kader; and they were not lost in him, despitethe crimes and the desperation of his life.

She held the paper out to him, with a passionate entreaty breakingthrough the enforced calm of despair with which she had hithertospoken.

"Cut me in ten thousand pieces with your swords, but save him, as youare brave men, as you are generous foes!"

With a single sign of his hand their leader waved them back where theycrowded around her, and leaped down from his saddle, and led the horsehe had dismounted to her.

"Maiden," he said gently, "we are Arabs, but we are not brutes. Weswore to avenge ourselves on an enemy; we are not vile enough toaccept a martyrdom. Take my horse--he is the swiftest of my troop--andgo you on your errand. You are safe from me."

She looked at him in stupor; the sense of his words was not tangibleto her; she had had no hope, no thought, that they would ever dealthus with her; all she had ever dreamed of was so to touch theirhearts and their generosity that they would spare one from among theirtroop to do the errand of mercy she had begged of them.

"You play with me!" she murmured, while her lips grew whiter and hergreat eyes larger in the intensity of her emotion. "Ah! for pity'ssake, make haste and kill me, so that this only may reach him!"

The chief, standing by her, lifted her up in his sinewy arms, up on tothe saddle of his charger. His voice was very solemn, his glance wasvery gentle; all the nobility of the highest Arab nature was arousedin him at the heroism of a child, a girl, an infidel--one, in hissight abandoned and shameful among her sex.

"Go in peace," he said simply; "it is not with such as thee that wewar."

Then, and then only, as she felt the fresh reins placed in her hand,and saw the ruthless horde around her fall back and leave her free,did she understand his meaning; did she comprehend that he gave herback both liberty and life, and, with the surrender of the horse heloved, the noblest and most precious gift that the Arab ever bestowsor ever receives. The unutterable joy seemed to blind her, and gleamupon her face like the blazing light of noon, as she turned herburning eyes full on him.

"Ah! now I believe that thine Allah rules thee, equally withChristians! If I live, thou shalt see me back ere another night; if Idie, France will know how to thank thee!"

"We do not do the thing that is right for the sake that men mayrecompense us," he answered her gently. "Fly to thy friend, andhereafter do not judge that those who are in arms against thee mustneeds be as the brutes that seek out whom they shall devour."

Then, with one word in his own tongue, he bade the horse bear hersouthward, and, as swiftly as a spear launched from his hand, theanimal obeyed him and flew across the plains. He looked after a while,through the dim, tremulous darkness that seemed cleft by the rush ofthe gallop as the clouds are cleft by lightning, while his tribe satsilent on their horses in moody, unwilling consent; savage in thatthey had been deprived of prey, moved in that they were sensible ofthis martyrdom which had been offered to them.

"Verily the courage of a woman has put the best among us unto shame,"he said, rather to himself than them, as he mounted the stallionbrought him from the rear and rode slowly northward; unconscious thatthe thing he had done was great, because conscious only that it wasjust.

And, borne by the fleetness of the desert-bred beast, she went awaythrough the heavy, bronze-hued dullness of the night. Her brain had nosense, her hands had no feeling, her eyes had no sight; the rushing ofwaters was loud on her ears, the giddiness of fasting and of fatiguesent the gloom eddying round and round like a whirlpool of shadow. Yetshe had remembrance enough left to ride on, and on, and on withoutonce flinching from the agonies that racked her cramped limbs andthrobbed in her beating temples; she had remembrance enough to strainher blind eyes toward the east and murmur, in her terror of that whitedawn, that must soon break, the only prayer that had been ever utteredby the lips no mother's kiss had ever touched:

"O God! keep the day back!"

CHAPTER XXXVII.

IN THE MIDST OF HER ARMY.

There was a line of light in the eastern sky. The camp was very still.It was the hour for the mounting of the guard, and, as the lightspread higher and higher, whiter and whiter, as the morning came, ascore of men advanced slowly and in silence to a broad strip of landscreened from the great encampment by the rise and fall of the ground,and stretching far and even, with only here and there a single palm tobreak its surface, over which the immense arc of the sky bent, grayand serene, with only the one colorless gleam eastward that waschanging imperceptibly into the warm, red flush of opening day.

Sunrise and solitude: they were alike chosen, lest the army thathonored, the comrades that loved him, should rise to his rescue;casting off the yoke of discipline, and remembering only that tyrannyand that wretchedness under which they had seen him patient andunmoved throughout so many years of servitude.

He stood tranquil beside the coffin within which his broken limbs andshot-pierced corpse would so soon be laid forever. There was a deepsadness on his face, but it was perfectly serene. To the words of thepriest who approached him he listened with respect, though he gentlydeclined the services of the Church. He had spoken but very littlesince his arrest; he was led out of the camp in silence and waited insilence now, looking across the plains to where the dawn was growingricher and brighter with every moment that the numbered seconds of hislife drifted slowly and surely away.

When they came near to bind the covering over his eyes, he motionedthem away, taking the bandage from their hands and casting it far fromhim.

"Did I ever fear to look down the depths of my enemies' muskets?"

It was the single outbreak, the single reproach, that escaped from him--the single utterance by which he ever quoted his services to France.Not one who heard him dared again force on him that indignity whichwould have blinded his sight, as though he had ever dreaded to meetdeath.

That one protest having escaped from him, he was once more still andcalm, as though the vacant grave yawning at his feet had been but acouch of down to rest his tired limbs. His eyes watched the daylightdeepen, and widen, and grow into one sheet of glowing roseate warmth;but there was no regret in the gaze; there was a fixed, fathomlessresignation that moved with a vague sense of awe those who had come toslay him, and who had been so used to slaughter that they fired theirvolley into their comrade's breast as callously as into the ranks oftheir antagonists.

"It is best thus," he thought, "if only she never knows----"

Over the slope of brown and barren earth that screened the camp fromview there came, at the very moment that the ramrods were drawn outwith a shrill, sharp ring from the carbine-barrels, a single figure--tall, stalwart, lithe, with the spring of the deerstalker in its rapidstep, and the sinew of the northern races in its mold.

Cecil never saw it; he was looking at the east, at the deepening ofthe morning flush that was the signal of his slaughter, and his headwas turned away.

The newcomer went straight to the adjutant in command, and addressedhim with brief preface, hurriedly and low.

"Your prisoner is Victor of the Chasseurs?--he is to be shot thismorning?"

The officer assented; he suffered the interruption, recognizing therank of the speaker.

"I heard of it yesterday; I rode all night from Oran. I feel greatpity for this man, though he is unknown to me," the stranger pursued,in rapid, whispered words. "His crime was--"

"A blow to his colonel, monsieur."

"And there is no possibility of a reprieve?"

"None."

"May I speak with him an instant? I have heard it said that he is ofmy country, and of a rank above his standing in his regiment here."

"You may address him, M. le Duc; but be brief. Time presses."

He thanked the officer for the unusual permission, and turned toapproach the prisoner. At that moment Cecil turned also, and theireyes met. A great, shuddering cry broke from them both; his head sankas though the bullet had already pierced his breast, and the man whobelieved him dead stood gazing at him, paralyzed with horror.

For a moment there was an awful silence. Then the Seraph's voice rangout with a terror in it that thrilled through the careless, calloushearts of the watching soldiery.

"Who is that man? He died--he died so long ago! And yet----"

Cecil's head was sunk on his chest; he never spoke, he never moved; heknew the helpless, hopeless misery that waited for the one who foundhim living only to find him also standing before his open grave. Hesaw nothing; he only felt the crushing force of his friend's armsflung round him, as though seizing him to learn whether he were aliving man or a spector dreamed of in delirium.

"Who are you? Answer me, for pity's sake!"

As the swift, hoarse, incredulous words poured on his ear, he, notseeking to unloose the other's hold, lifted his head and looked fullin the eyes that had not met his own for twelve long years. In thatone look all was uttered; the strained, eager, doubting eyes that readtheir answer in it needed no other.

"You live still! Oh! thank God--thank God!"

And as the thanksgiving escaped him, he forgot all save the breathlessjoy of this resurrection; forgot that at their feet the yawning gravewas open and unfilled. Then, and only then, under that recognition ofthe friendship that had never failed and never doubted, the courage ofthe condemned gave way, and his limbs shook with a great shiver ofintolerable torture; and at the look that came upon his face, the lookof death, brute-like anguish, the man who loved him remembered all--remembered that he stood there in the morning light only to be shotdown like a beast of prey. Holding him there still with that strongpressure of his sinewy hands, he swore a great oath that rolled likethunder down the hard, keen air.

"You! perishing here! If they send their shots through you, they shallreach me first in their passage! O Heaven! Why have you lived likethis? Why have you been lost to me, if you were dead to all the worldbeside?"

They were the words that his sister had spoken. Cecil's white lipsquivered as he heard them; his voice was scarcely audible as it pantedthrough them.

"I was accused--"

"Aye! But by whom? Not by me! Never by me!"

Cecil's eyes filled with slow, blinding tears; tears sweet as awoman's in her joy, bitter as a man's in his agony. He knew that inthis one heart at least no base suspicion ever had harbored; he knewthat this love, at least, had cleaved to him through all shame andagainst all evil.

"God reward you!" he murmured. "You have never doubted?"

"Doubted? Was your honor not as my own?"

"I can die at peace then; you know me guiltless--"

"Great God! Death shall not touch you. As I stand here not a hair ofyour head shall be harmed--"

"Hush! Justice must take its course. One thing only--has she heard?"

"Nothing. She has left Africa. But you can be saved; you shall besaved! They do not know what they do!"

"Yes! They but follow the sentence of the law. Do not regret it. It isbest thus."

"Best!--that you should be slaughtered in cold blood!" His voice washoarse with the horror which, despite his words, possessed him. Heknew what the demands of discipline exacted, he knew what theinexorable tyranny of the army enforced, he knew that he had found thelife lost to him for so long only to stand by and see it struck downlike a shot stag's.

Cecil's eyes looked at him with a regard in which all the sacrifice,all the patience, all the martyrdom of his life spoke.

"Best, because a lie I could never speak to you, and the truth I cannever tell to you. Do not let her know; it might give her pain. I haveloved her; that is useless, like all the rest. Give me your hand oncemore, and then--let them do their duty. Turn your head away; it willsoon be over!"

Almost ere he asked it, his friend's hands closed upon both is own,keeping the promise made so long before in the old years gone; great,tearless sobs heaved the depths of his broad chest; those gentle,weary words had rent his very soul, and he knew that he was powerlesshere; he knew that he could no more stay this doom of death than hecould stay the rising of the sun up over the eastern heavens. Theclear voice of the officer in command rang shrilly through thestillness.

"Monsieur, make your farewell. I can wait no longer."

The Seraph started, and flung himself round with the grand challengeof a lion, struck by a puny spear. His face flushed crimson; his wordswere choked in his throbbing throat.

"As I live, you shall not fire! I forbid you! I swear by my honor andthe honor of England that he shall not die like a dog. He is of mycountry; he is of my Order. I will appeal to your Emperor; he willaccord me his life the instant I ask it. Give me only an hour'sreprieve--a few moments' space to speak to your chiefs, to seek outyour general--"

"It is impossible, monsieur."

The curt, calm answer was inflexible; against the sentence and itsexecution there could be no appeal.

Cecil laid his hand upon his old friend's shoulders.

"It will be useless," he murmured. "Let them act; the quicker thebetter."

"What! you think I would look on and see you die?"

"Would to Heaven you had never known I lived----"

The officer made a gesture to the guard to separate them.

"Monsieur, submit to the execution of the law, or I must arrest you."

Lyonnesse flung off the detaining hand of the guard, and swung roundso that his agonized eyes gazed close into the adjutant's immovableface, which before that gaze lost its coldness and its rigor, andchanged to a great pity for this stranger who had found the friend ofhis youth in the man who stood condemned to perish there.

"An hour's reprieve; for mercy's sake, grant that!"

"I have said, it is impossible."

"But you do not dream who is--"

"It matters not."

"He is an English noble, I tell you--"

"He is a soldier who has broken the law; that suffices."

"O Heaven! have you no humanity?"

"We have justice."

"Justice! If you have justice, let your chiefs hear his story; let hisname be made known; give me an hour's space to plead for him. YourEmperor would grant me his life, were he here; yield me an hour--ahalf hour--anything that will give me time to serve him--"

"It is out of the question; I must obey my orders. I regret you shouldhave this pain; but if you do not cease to interfere, my soldiers mustmake you."

Where the guards held him, Cecil saw and heard. His voice rose withall its old strength and sweetness.

"My friend, do not plead for me. For the sake of our common countryand our old love, let us both meet this with silence and withcourage."

"You are a madman!" cried the man, whose heart felt breaking underthis doom he could neither avert nor share. "You think that they shallkill you before my eyes!--you think I shall stand by to see youmurdered! What crime have you done? None, I dare swear, save beingmoved, under insult, to act as the men of your race ever acted! Ah,God! why have lived as you have done? Why not have trusted my faithand my love? If you had believed in my faith as I believed in yourinnocence, this misery never had come to us!"

"Hush! hush! or you will make me die like a coward."

He dreaded lest he should do so; this ordeal was greater than hispower to bear it. With the mere sound of this man's voice a longing,so intense in its despairing desire, came on him for this life whichthey were about to kill in him forever.

The words stung his hearer well-nigh to madness; he turned on thesoldiers with all the fury of his race that slumbered so long, butwhen it awoke was like the lion's rage. Invective, entreaty,conjuration, command, imploring prayer, and ungoverned passion pouredin tumultuous words, in agonized eloquence, from his lips; all answerwas a quick sign of the hand, and, ere he saw them, a dozen soldierswere round him, his arms were seized, his splendid frame was held aspowerless as a lassoed bull; for a moment there was a horriblestruggle, then a score of ruthless hands locked him as in iron gyves,and forced his mouth to silence and his eyes to blindness. This wasall the mercy they could give--to spare him the sight of his friend'sslaughter.

Cecil's eyes strained in him with one last, longing look; then heraised his hand and gave the signal for his own death-shot.

The leveled carbines covered him; he stood erect with his face fulltoward the sun. Ere they could fire, a shrill cry pierced the air.

"Wait! In the name of France."

Dismounted, breathless, staggering, with her arms flung upward, andher face bloodless with fear, Cigarette appeared upon the ridge ofrising ground.

The cry of command pealed out upon the silence in the voice that theArmy of Africa loved as the voice of their Little One. And the crycame too late; the volley was fired, the crash of sound thrilledacross the words that bade them pause, the heavy smoke rolled out uponthe air; the death that was doomed was dealt.

But beyond the smoke-cloud he staggered slightly, and then stood erectstill, almost unharmed, grazed only by some few of the balls. Theflash of fire was not so fleet as the swiftness of her love; and onhis breast she threw herself, and flung her arms about him, and turnedher head backward with her old, dauntless, sunlit smile as the ballspierced her bosom, and broke her limbs, and were turned away by theshield of warm young life from him.

Her arms were gliding from about his neck, and her shot limbs weresinking to the earth as he caught her up where she dropped to hisfeet.

"O God! my child! They have killed you!"

He suffered more, as the cry broke from him, than if the bullets hadbrought him that death which he saw at one glance had stricken downforever all the glory of her childhood, all the gladness of her youth.

She laughed--all the clear, imperious, arch laughter of her sunniesthours unchanged.

"Chut! It is the powder and ball of France! That does not hurt. If itwas an Arbico's bullet now! But wait! Here is the Marshal's order. Hesuspends your sentence; I have told him all. You are safe!--do youhear?--you are safe! How he looks! Is he grieved to live? MesFrancais! Tell him clearer than I can tell--here is the order. TheGeneral must have it. No--not out of my hand till the General sees it.Fetch him, some of you--fetch him to me."

"Great Heavens! You have given your life for mine!"

The words broke from him in an agony as he held her upward against hisheart, himself so blind, so stunned, with the sudden recall from deathto life, and with the sacrifice whereby life was thus brought to him,that he could scarce see her face, scarce hear her voice, but onlydimly, incredulously, terribly knew, in some vague sense, that she wasdying, and dying thus for him.

She smiled up in his eyes, while even in that moment, when her lifewas broken down like a wounded bird's, and the shots had piercedthrough from her shoulder to her bosom, a hot, scarlet flush came overher cheeks as she felt his touch, and rested on his heart.

"A life! what is it to give? We hold it in our hands every hour, wesoldiers, and toss it in change for a draught of wine. Lay me down onthe ground--at your feet--so! I shall live longest that way, and Ihave much to tell. How they crowd around me! Mes soldats, do not makethat grief and that rage over me. They are sorry they fired; that isfoolish. They were only doing their duty, and they could not hear mein time."

But the brave words could not console those who had killed the Childof the Tricolor; they flung their carbines away, they beat theirbreasts, they cursed themselves and the mother who had borne them; thesilent, rigid, motionless phalanx that had stood there in the dawn tosee death dealt in the inexorable penalty of the law was broken upinto a tumultuous, breathless, heart-stricken, infuriated throng,maddened with remorse, convulsed with sorrow, turning wild eyes ofhate on him as on the cause through which their darling had beenstricken. He, laying her down with unspeakable gentleness as she hadbidden him, hung over her, leaning her head against his arm, andwatching in paralyzed horror the helplessness of the quivering limbs,the slow flowing of the blood beneath the Cross that shone where thatyoung heroic heart so soon would beat no more.

"Oh, my child, my child!" he moaned, as the full might and meaning ofthis devotion which had saved him at such cost rushed on him. "What amI worth that you should perish for me? Better a thousand times haveleft me to my fate! Such nobility, such sacrifice, such love!"

The hot color flushed her face once more; she was strong to the lastto conceal that passion for which she was still content to perish inher youth.

"Chut! We are comrades, and you are a brave man. I would do the samefor any of my Spahis. Look you, I never heard of your arrest till Iheard, too, of your sentence----"

She paused a moment, and her features grew white and quivered withpain and with the oppression that seemed to lie like lead upon herchest. But she forced herself to be stronger than the anguish whichassailed her strength; and she motioned them all to be silent as shespoke on while her voice still should serve her.

"They will tell you how I did it--I have not time. The Marshal gavehis word you shall be saved; there is no fear. That is your friend whobends over me here?--is it not? A fair face, a brave face! You will goback to your land--you will live among your own people--and she, shewill love you now--now she knows you are of her Order!"

Something of the old thrill of jealous dread and hate quivered throughthe words, but the purer nobler nature vanquished it; she smiled up inhis eyes, heedless of the tumult round them.

"You will be happy. That is well. Look you--it is nothing that I did.I would have done it for any one of my soldiers. And for this"--shetouched the blood flowing from her side with the old, bright, bravesmile--"it was an accident; they must not grieve for it. My men aregood to me; they will feel much regret and remorse; but do not letthem. I am glad to die."

The words were unwavering and heroic; but for one moment a convulsionwent over her face; the young life was so strong in her, the youngspirit was so joyous in her, existence was so new, so fresh, sobright, so dauntless a thing to Cigarette. She loved life; thedarkness, the loneliness, the annihilation of death were horrible toher as the blackness and the solitude of night to a young child.Death, like night, can be welcome only to the weary, and she was wearyof nothing on the earth that bore her buoyant steps; the suns, thewinds, the delights of the sights, the joys of the senses, the musicof her own laughter, the mere pleasure of the air upon her cheeks, orof the blue sky above her head, were all so sweet to her. Her welcomeof her death-shot was the only untruth that had ever soiled herfearless lips. Death was terrible; yet she was content--content tohave come to it for his sake.

There was a ghastly, stricken silence round her. The order she hadbrought had just been glanced at, but no other thought was with themost callous there than the heroism of her act, than the martyrdom ofher death.

The color was fast passing from her lips, and a mortal pallor settlingthere in the stead of that rich, bright hue, once warm as the scarletheart of the pomegranate. Her head leaned back on Cecil's breast andshe felt the great burning tears fall, one by one, upon her brow as hehung speechless over her; she put her hand upward and touched his eyessoftly.

"Chut! What is it to die--just to die? You have lived your martyrdom;I could not have done that. Listen, just one moment. You will be rich.Take care of the old man--he will not trouble long--and of Vole-qui-veut and Etoile, and Boule Blanche, and the rat, and all the dogs,will you? They will show you the Chateau de Cigarette in Algiers. Ishould not like to think that they would starve."

She felt his lips move with the promise he could not find voice toutter; and she thanked him with that old child-like smile that hadlost nothing of its light.

"That is good; they will be happy with you. And see here--that Arabmust have back his white horse; he alone saved you. Have heed thatthey spare him. And make my grave somewhere where my army passes;where I can hear the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of thetroops--O God! I forgot! I shall not wake when the bugles sound. Itwill all end now; will it not? That is horrible, horrible!"

A shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense that all herglowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was crushed out foreverfrom its place upon the earth forced itself on and overwhelmed her.But she was of too brave a mold to suffer any foe--even the foe thatconquers kings--to have power to appall her. She raised herself, andlooked at the soldiery around her, among them the men whose carbineshad killed her, whose anguish was like the heart-rending anguish ofwomen.

"Mes Francais! That was a foolish word of mine. How many of my bravesthave fallen in death; and shall I be afraid of what they welcomed? Donot grieve like that. You could not help it; you were doing your duty.If the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to him; and hehas been unhappy so long, and borne wrong so patiently, he has earnedthe right to live and enjoy. Now I--I have been happy all my days,like a bird, like a kitten, like a foal, just from being young andtaking no thought. I should have had to suffer if I had lived. It ismuch best as it is----"

Her voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic words; loss ofblood was fast draining all strength from her, and she quivered in atorture she could not wholly conceal. He for whom she perished hungover her in an agony greater far than hers. It seemed a hideous dreamto him that this child lay dying in his stead.

She heard; and looked up at him with a look in which all thepassionate, hopeless, imperishable love she had resisted and concealedso long spoke with an intensity she never dreamed.

"She is content," she whispered softly. "You did not understand herrightly; that was all."

"All! O God, how I have wronged you!"

The full strength, and nobility, and devotion of this passion he haddisbelieved in and neglected rushed on him as he met her eyes; for thefirst time he saw her as she was; for the first time he saw all ofwhich the splendid heroism of this untrained nature would have beencapable under a different fate. And it struck him suddenly, heavily,as with a blow; it filled him with a passion of remorse.

"My darling! my darling! what have I done to be worthy of such love?"he murmured while the tears fell from his blinded eyes, and his headdrooped until his lips met hers. At the first utterance of that wordbetween them, at the unconscious tenderness of his kisses that had theanguish of a farewell in them, the color suddenly flushed all over herblanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great, shivering sighran through her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learnedwhat its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, andher eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her senseswithout consciousness.

"Hush!" she answered, with a look that pierced his soul. "Keep thosekisses for Milady. She will have the right to love you; she is of your'aristocrats,' she is not 'unsexed.' As for me--I am only a littletrooper who has saved my comrade! My soldiers, come round me oneinstant; I shall not long find words."

Her eyes closed as she spoke; a deadly faintness and coldness passedover her; and she gasped for breath. A moment, and the resolutecourage in her conquered; her eyes opened and rested on the war-wornfaces of her "children"--rested in a long, last look of unspeakablewistfulness and tenderness.

"I cannot speak as I would," she said at length, while her voice grewvery faint. "But I have loved you. All is said!"

All was uttered in those four brief words. "She had loved them." Thewhole story of her young life was told in the single phrase. And thegaunt, battle-scarred, murderous, ruthless veterans of Africa whoheard her could have turned their weapons against their own breasts,and sheathed them there, rather than have looked on to see theirdarling die.

"I have been too quick in anger sometimes--forgive it," she saidgently. "And do not fight and curse among yourselves; it is bad amidbrethren. Bury my Cross with me, if they will let you; and let thecolors be over my grave, if you can. Think of me when you go intobattle; and tell them in France----"

For the first time her eyes filled with great tears as the name of herbeloved land paused upon her lips. She stretched her arms out with agesture of infinite longing, like a lost child that vainly seeks itsmother.

"If I could only see France once more! France----"

It was the last word upon her utterance; her eyes met Cecil's in onefleeting, upward glance of unutterable tenderness, then, with herhands still stretched out westward to where her country was, and withthe dauntless heroism of her smile upon her face like light, she gavea tired sigh as of a child that sinks to sleep, and in the midst ofher Army of Africa the Little One lay dead.

In the shadow of his tent, at midnight he whom she had rescued stoodlooking down at a bowed, stricken form before him with an exceeding,yearning pity in his gaze.

The words had at length been spoken that had lifted from him theburden of another's guilt; the hour at last had come in which his eyeshad met the eyes of his friend, without a hidden thought between them.The sacrifice was ended, the martyrdom was over; henceforth this doomof exile and of wretchedness would be but as a hideous dream;henceforth his name would be stainless among men, and the desire ofhis heart would be given him. And in this hour of release thestrongest feeling in him was the sadness of an infinite compassion;and where his brother was stretched prostrate in shame before him,Cecil stooped and raised him tenderly.

"Say no more," he murmured. "It has been well for me that I havesuffered these things. For yourself--if you do indeed repent, and feelthat you owe me any debt, atone for it, and pay it, by letting yourown life be strong in truth and fair in honor."

And it seemed to him that he himself had done no great or righteousthing in that servitude for another's sake, whose yoke was now liftedoff him for evermore. But, looking out over the sleeping camp whereone young child alone lay in a slumber that never would be broken, hisheart ached with the sense of some great, priceless gift received, andundeserved, and cast aside; even while in the dreams of passion thatnow knew its fruition possible, and the sweetness of communion withthe friend whose faith had never forsaken him, he retraced the yearsof his exile, and thanked God that it was thus with him at the end.

CHAPTER THE LAST.

AT REST.

Under the green, springtide leafage of English woodlands, made musicalwith the movement and the song of innumerable birds that had theirnests among the hawthorn boughs and deep, cool foliage of elm andbeech, an old horse stood at pasture. Sleeping--with the sun on hisgray, silken skin, and the flies driven off with a dreamy switch ofhis tail, and the grasses odorous about his hoofs, with dog-violets,and cowslips, and wild thyme--sleeping, yet not so surely but at onevoice he started, and raised his head with all the eager grace of hisyouth, and gave a murmuring noise of welcome and delight. He had knownthat voice in an instant, though for so many years his ear had neverthrilled to it; Forest King had never forgotten. Now, scarce a daypassed but what it spoke to him some word of greeting or of affection,and his black, soft eyes would gleam with their old fire, because itstone brought back a thousand memories of bygone victory--only memoriesnow, when Forest King, in the years of age, dreamed out his happy lifeunder the fragrant shade of the forest wealth of Royallieu.

With his arm over the horse's neck, the exile, who had returned to hisbirthright, stood silent a while, gazing out over the land on whichhis eyes never wearied of resting; the glad, cool, green, dew-freshened earth that was so sweet and full of peace, after thescorched and blood-stained plains, whose sun was as flame, and whosebreath was as pestilence. Then his glance came back and dwelt upon theface beside him, the proud and splendid woman's face that had learnedits softness and its passion from him alone.

"It was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. "It was worththe trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known----"

She, looking upward at him with those deep, lustrous, imperial eyesthat had first met his own in the glare of the African noon, passedher hand over his lips with a gesture of tenderness far more eloquentfrom her than from women less proud and less prone to weakness.

"Ah, hush! when I think of what her love was, how worthless looks myown! How little worthy of the fate it finds! What have I done thatevery joy should become mine, when she----"

Her mouth trembled, and the phrase died unfinished; strong as her lovehad grown, it looked to her unproven and without desert, beside thatwhich had chose to perish for his sake. And where they stood with thefuture as fair before them as the light of the day around them, hebowed his head, as before some sacred thing, at the whisper of thechild who had died for him. The memories of both went back to a placein a desert land where the folds of the Tricolor drooped over onelittle grave turned westward toward the shores of France--a grave madewhere the beat of drum, and the sound of moving squadrons, and thering of the trumpet-call, and the noise of the assembling battalionscould be heard by night and day; a grave where the troops, as theypassed it by, saluted and lowered their arms in tender reverence, infaithful, unasked homage, because beneath the Flag they honored therewas carved in the white stone one name that spoke to every heartwithin the army she had loved, one name on which the Arab sun streamedas with a martyr's glory: